Political junkies are doing it tough at the moment. The winter recess, and the Olympics, have blotted politics out of the media. We don’t even have Brendan Nelson to kick around at the moment.
Fortunately Nick Xenophon has leapt into the breach. Xenophon, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and will happily fill it himself. This week it’s Fuelwatch. Xenophon used to support Fuelwatch. Now he doesn’t. Based on his legislative history in South Australia, he may well support it again next week. He’s a bit like that — if not quite as bad as Dr Nelson, who struggles to get to the end of a sentence without changing his position.
Xenophon doesn’t like the bit about Fuelwatch that means retailers have to keep their prices at the same level for 24 hours. There’s a sound reason for that requirement — it gives certainty to motorists considering which station to fill up at, but no one likes it and price-fixing regulation isn’t a good look. In any event, Xenophon’s declaration doesn’t really advance debate much — we already knew he felt that way.
But stung by Xenophon getting some airtime, Steve Fielding had to join the fray as well. Fielding also doesn’t like the 24 hour rule. Which we also knew already. But he couldn’t allow Xenophon to get one over him. These two are going to be shockers. Any publicity one gets is going to prompt the other to open their mouth.
Given the Greens want us to switch to bikes, it’s looking a bit grim for the full-blown Fuelwatch scheme. We might end up with a petrol version of the compelling Grocerychoice website.
This is, ostensibly, a terrible blow for the Government, but on reflection it’s hard to think why. Fuelwatch was always a stunt to demonstrate how much the Government felt motorists’ pain. Its introduction was likely to lead to headlines about its lack of impact, except on the poor independent retailers who, it is alleged, will be driven en masse from the industry despite their valiant attempts to provide a skerrick of competition in a market run by sinister multinationals.
If the Senate knocks it back, we’ll never hear any of that. If petrol prices spike again, the Government can shrug its shoulders and gesture toward the Coalition.
“Tell it to them,” the Prime Minister will say.
“They refused to pass Fuelwatch. They and their Big Oil mates opposed it.”
More likely, something will be negotiated in the Senate. The 24 hour period could be shrunk to six hours, or two hours. It doesn’t matter much — the scheme was going to do anything anyway. We’re not talking about the debauchery of high-quality policy outcomes here.
Xenophon and Fielding, however, will be talking. A lot.
Regarding sporting metaphors like hammer throw at a pollie’s head, I’ve been affected by Bill Leak’s grim cartoon of Beijing haze and various Chinese javelin judges in white coats literally skewered to the turf. How Bill get’s them to publish such stuff I can’t imagine.
Here’s another political angle of interest – the Libs in WA expose poor ALP governance on gas pipeline safety (Australian p14 yesterday, today p12) – but doesn’t this also demonstrate that the gas pipeline sector itself are a risky proposition for potentially catastrophic effect of leakage from a large scale carbon capture sequestration pipeline? In the gas explosion on the Apache Energy Varanus Island pipeline in north west WA it was ‘only’ billions of dollars in lost economic production. But in a populated area it would be thousands of deaths from asphyxiation from a lethal CO2 cloud bleeding out – say overnight – colourless, odourless, soundless … and oh so fatal. Even the CEO of local Exxon subsidiary Mobil Australia said on the Kohler ABC business show that the he didn’t want CCS to “sour” any current oil fields till at least 2020-2025 when they are finished. The implication is very clear – if it’s not safe for over lying oil fields, its NOT SAFE FOR PEOPLE.
I bet the Barnett Liberals didn’t realise they were also blowing the whistle on CCS? Or maybe we should give ’em credit? Notice too BHP etc joint venture on $1B solar potentially x 33 rollout if the economics stand up. Maybe they know something about CCS that Mobil already talked about with Alan Kohler ? – it’s a crock. Someone should tell Martin Ferguson too.
Fuel, Grocery, Carbon, Asianforum and Whale watches are unimportant in and of themselves but they do indicate the Rudd Labor government mindset.
Smart moves politically by both Fielding and Xenophon. They can also anticipate with relish that Rudd Labor will give them plenty more opportunities for publicity into the future
A flip flop is a hammer throw???
Full marks to Nick Xenephon for putting a stop to this stupid political stunt .Occasionally Governments need to be saved from themselves and this is definitely one such occasion
Double no to that I’m afraid. It’s no flip flop – early on in the Fuelwatch saga Xenphon was referred to as luke warm based on SA inquiry, only he hadn’t taken his seat in the Senate by that stage (if memory serves?). As NX said on AM this morning he pushed for the Inquiry to review the scheme in SA that he originally supported. That’s “evidence based” change of policy one would have thought.
Secondly AM reports today NX as joining the Greens position, so not sure why you put Fielding into the combo, except as you say to play catch up.
But thirdly and this is what I think Crikey might have led on – Xenophon was at the save the Murray rally on the weekend. He says the ALP have “put up the white flag”. Yep. He’s dead right about that. They are playing a dead (literally) bat and watching National Party aligned agri industry go to the wall.
So what does a savvy independent, not so hamstrung by the Green Party principled notions of not cross trading on policy? He ramps up his influence on something that the ALP really do care about and gives them a good jab in the cobblers. In effect he’s stolen a march on the Rudd PR machine and his so called ‘flip flop’ on fuelwatch is actually his hammer throw at Penny Wong’s policy head. And you know while respecting the Green Party approach one has some sympathy for NX the crow eater going for them no holds barred. I bet the ACF does too, the old home of cross trading Peter Garrett.